Commonly objects become lodged in a living body and need to be removed. Various types and sizes of forceps have been used in the past to seize and extract such embedded objects.
The use of forceps for object extraction can be traumatic to cartilage and soft tissue. Forceps are formed of metal or rigid plastic, which are hard and can cause pain and tearing of tissue even when wielded with the gentlest technique possible.
An endoscopic surgical instrument has been proposed, which relies entirely upon vacuum pressure to maintain a grip on the foreign body. Because embedded foreign bodies can have irregular shapes or surface textures, vacuum pressure alone is sometimes unreliable in maintaining a grip on the object during extraction. If the object has a hole, such as a bead, the vacuum pressure will be unable to grip the object. Also, because some embedded foreign bodies are easily frangible and because control of the amount of vacuum pressure applied is difficult, reliance on vacuum pressure alone for retention of the object during extraction risks fragmenting the object.